Or so says the Reynolds School of Journalism. And we wholeheartedly agree. Coming on the heels of the Salt Lake City Wordcamp, we were pleased to be a part of another informative and inspiring gathering of the best and brightest WordPress designers and developers. If you missed it, well, there will most likely be another one soon. Until then, enjoy some of our CEO’s Flickr photos of the event, and read the School’s report in full below.

Reno-Tahoe Wordcamp a Big Success

April 27,2009

Matt Mullenweg, founding developer of WordPress and UNR student Colin Loretz, the driving force behind Reno-Tahoe Wordcamp. Photo by David LaPlante.

As Matt Mullenweg described how he came to develop the popular software WordPress, some of the 70-plus attendees in Saturday’s Reno-Tahoe Wordcamp twittered Matt’s geocities page, scrolled through his photo blog and checked out his demo sites on Automattic.

Mullenweg, who wrote the original code for WordPress and is still intimately connected with upgrading and expanding the capabilities of the original idea, previewed upcoming products that allow for multiple users and more social networking.

“We create things and we have no idea how people will use them,” he said. “It’s amazing to hear what people are doing with these tools.”

Saturday’s Wordcamp, sponsored by Twelve Horses and the Reynolds School of Journalism, featured a day-long series of speakers on using WordPress, developing a personal brand and understanding social media.

In his keynote address, Mullenweg described the history of WordPress and how much the process of open-source software development influenced his interest and direction.

In another popular session, David LaPlante, CEO of TwelveHorses, described an epiphany his company had as they watched site useage over the past few years. “People care about people,” he said. “Trust is the first thing we need to do business together. It comes with connecting with you as an individual.”

LaPlante emphasized his view that information is getting more personal, transparent and authentic. He noticed that on the sites they build, “about us” pages that feature personal insights about the individuals in the company attract a lot more page views.

RSJ alumna Annie Flanzraich asked LaPlante how to navigate the online emphasis on personal and transparent disclosure among journalists or bosses who don’t understand – or agree with — this kind of personal divulgence.

“The water is moving that way quickly,” LaPlante said. He described a disequilibrium in the marketplace as we move from one set of expectations to another. He pointed out the fastest growing demographic on Facebook is women over 55. “The stronger your brand, the more  you will connect with some and disconnect with others,” LaPlante said.

RSJ Professor Bob Felten organized the school sponsorship of the event and helped host a welcome breakfast for attendees. “It was an amazing day,” Felten said. “We want RSJ to be at the center of this conversation in the community, and Saturday was a great demonstration of why that’s important.”

Couldn’t make it? Many Wordcamp videos have been posted on WordPress.tv. Copies of the presentations from Saturday’s Wordcamp will be available online in the next few days. Check out http://renowordcamp.wordpress.com for updates.

At a recent TED conference, best-selling author of Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert stated, “we have completely internalized and accepted collectively this notion that creativity and suffering are somehow inherently linked.” She goes on to further frame “the utter, maddening, capriciousness of the creative process” by suggesting that we pull from something greater than ourselves. Maybe Gilbert was thinking of the late Carl Jung who once said, “Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument.”?

When it comes to email marketing, designing for your objectives can be a little maddening. If you do pull from something greater than yourself, and then translate that perfect vision to strategy and paper, you may find that your creative team is not realizing it. So, back and forth you go until there is no time left. A deadline is a deadline. But there is no doubt that the battle for the inbox – and your customer’s attention – requires engaging, actionable designs. What can you do to minimize your suffering and help aid that creative process along?

Know Your Audience

Through personalization, you no doubt consider who you’re addressing with every send. But who really is your audience, and what are they expecting from you? If you have a sizeable database with varying preferences, this is where you can not only practice segmentation, but also employ different designs and messages for each segment. What a great way to make your audience feel like you are personally interested in their needs and goals. Not to mention leveraging different designs for newsletters, promotions, events, and important notifications, as many businesses do.

Get Your Rendering Right

There is nothing worse than a well-designed email that just doesn’t render right. Ask yourself whether your recipients are primarily businesses or consumers? This will determine if the majority is using say, Microsoft Outlook vs. Gmail or Hotmail, or perhaps even receiving their emails on a mobile device – keep in mind that 30% of B-to-B recipients are receiving emails on their mobile devices. Regardless, it is impossible to get an email design, or the content offer itself, to render perfectly in all email clients, so you want to shoot for the top 2 or 3 and then make sure you test – test – test before you launch.

Avoid Graphical Overload

Remember less can be more. It’s especially important not to overuse graphics in an email to the point that images constitute the entire message. It is that much easier to delete an email message if nothing at all captures the consumer’s attention before they have opted to download images. Ask yourself, what are recipients going to see above the fold? Does it stand out? Does it speak to their needs? Call upon Maslow’s hierarchy of needs if you need some help with this.

Content is King

Great designs fall flat without good content. No amount of slick design skilz are going to carry your customer over the line if the message doesn’t add value to the recipient’s life. Subject lines, headlines, offers and calls to action are all crucial to a successful campaign. With one quick glance of these elements a recipient will understand what the value is immediately upon viewing the email. Easier said than done, but if you solidify the messaging first, establishing a strong supporting design can be made much easier.

The Beauty is in the Data

Don’t be afraid to test a few different designs early on in the game. Many email marketers get their template and design down to a point where everyone internally is pleased with the outcome. But no one has any idea what the customer really thinks! Each time a client has pursued A/B testing, it was completely obvious which email design performed the best. Also, don’t be afraid to test offers and subject lines. As you achieve greater relevance it will have a direct result on your clickthrough rates. Yes, you may have to invest more time in creating additional versions at the outset, but the payoff will be greater conversions with the final send.

Break the Rules

The email marketing industry loves to apply various rules and best practices by which we should guide our “online lives”. While it’s great to have a foundation to work from, don’t let best practices become a burden either. At the end of the day, your job is to move the needle more than you did the last time, so don’t be afraid to experiment with the experiential and maybe even defy conventional wisdom.

Considering these factors during the early stages of an email marketing campaign will lessen the suffering and assist you in finding the drive to make email a more effective instrument.

As email marketers, we are faced with a myriad of tasks when it comes to constructing successful email campaigns. Proper design, messaging, and the integration of actionable items are just a few of the required steps. Once you finally get to the point of hitting send, you want to be confident your message will reach its intended recipients. If only it were that easy!

Spam is on the rise and has been since its origin. It was recently reported[1] that close to 200 Billion spam email messages are sent each day – approximately 90% of the world’s email. To combat this, Internet and email providers aggressively monitor their networks for user complaints, stale data, and malicious content. They establish reputation models that identify if an email sender is legitimate or not, and then use this data to determine whether to deliver, bulk, or block incoming messages.

Companies that are in the business of sending email marketing messages find themselves in a position where they are trying to send large volumes of legitimate email, but at the same time not look like a spammer. To help bridge this perception gap a number of email sender best practices have been developed and recommended by the email industry at large. These best practices help email senders to identify themselves as legitimate companies, sending legitimate email to recipients that have requested it.

There are some fundamental steps you need to take on your own, but then there are also several services your ESP should provide.

Accountability

Email providers continually monitor their inbound mail to determine what messages are legitimate and don’t cause user complaints. To that end, there are a number of steps a sender can do to look as legitimate and authentic as possible:

1. Authenticate email with the authentication standards available (i.e SPF, Sender ID, DomainKeys, DKIM).
2. Ensure that WHOIS information for the sending domain is correct and accessible. Don’t mask this information using domain privacy services.
3. Ensure that sending IP addresses have valid and correct reverse DNS.
4. Use a dedicated sending IP address.
5. Add verbiage to the top of the message asking the recipient to add the sender email address to their address book.
6. Provide a link to an online version of the email.
7. Make unsubscribing obvious and easy.

If you are not sure whether your ESP provides these services then now is the time to ask. Nevertheless, not all deliverability services come automatically, and some take a little more effort on your part. But it is worth it.

Project Your Brand

Companies often make the mistake of not leading with their brand when they send email messages. Use the “from” field and subject line to distinguish your company, and live text in the preview pane to again communicate who the sender is. Be very aware of how your emails appear before images are downloaded by the recipient’s email client, and when in doubt setup and test send to multiple email clients from Gmail to Microsoft Outlook.

Maintain a Two-Way Dialogue

It is important that you give your recipients an easy means of responding. If you can email them then they can email you. Many times recipients will simply reply to the original senders address, so be sure to monitor those requests. It also helps to clearly provide a “Contact Us” link, or a preferred “reply to” address. Another means of leveraging the conversation is to point your email communications back to a company sponsored blog or forum.

List Hygiene and Maintenance

In order to maintain good deliverability rates, it is important that you keep your email lists up to date. The best means of doing this is to be sure you email everyone on your list at least once every 90 days. Senders should keep historical data on subscription signups, and quarantine email addresses that bounce, or are returned as not deliverable.

The plague of Spam has taught society to not trust email. As such, it is a continual uphill battle for legitimate senders to get their email delivered successfully. Nevertheless, if you take these steps it will go a long way to demonstrate accountability and maintain email marketing as one of the most effective tools to reach your current and potential customers.

[1] “Cisco Report Spotlights Worldwide Cyber Security Threats”, http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2008/prod_121508.html